Chickens attaaaaaackkk!

Part of the dream has always been to have chickens, then we got more keen on them because a lot of (local) people when we mention we have seen snakes in the house tell us we need to get chickens as they get rid of snakes. We imagine the chickens commando style with leader shouting 'chickens attaaaaaack hut hut hut' and then mad pecking frenzy, but it is apparently because the snakes don't like the constant scratching as they can't 'hear' anything above it.
We ended up ordering the chicken house (le poullailer) from the UK because it was cheaper.

Constructing Poulailler

It is made of recycled plastic. May not be most attractive thing ever, but is alledgedly easy to clean.

The chickens moved in today but won't start laying for something like a couple of months. There are (currently) five poules de gascogne. I say 'currently' because we have spoken to a number of people round here who seem to have problems with keeping chickens alive for more than about 5 mins because the fox gets them - even during the day.
The house has a door that closes at dusk and they have an electric fence around them, but we will see.

Chicken and Poulailler

Two of the chickens have already managed to bust through the fence, the largest (shown here) and the smallest. Plus we have had an exciting incident where the largest chicken decided that she couldn't get in to the hen house (having fallen off the ramp) and was then running around in a panic looking for somewhere to roost saying 'puk puk puk PUK KAAAK' a lot and flapping maddly on to the roof of the house then back down. Three of the others were happily inside but the littlest one was following her around. Eventually she managed to get inside once Doug had shoved some of the others out of the way and the door closed. I hope they make it through to morning! I expect they are going to wake us at dawn as at the moment the run is just out the back of the house so we can see what they are up to in the early days while we get the hang of it.